


no place for promises here

by myillusionsgone



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Police, F/M, Gen, a lot of brotp vibes, but then i would be killed, i'd say the hot chocolate is an important character in this, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 05:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2760749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myillusionsgone/pseuds/myillusionsgone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Did you see another lifetime where I was not a part so far entwined?</p>
            </blockquote>





	no place for promises here

**I've been led on to think that we've been trying for too long. Every time we drift, we're forcing what is wrong – at last that voice is gone.**

 

The offices were nearly deserted and Silver Fullbuster found himself yawning as he returned from a trip to a suspect’s home. But there was a blue and white mug standing on the table in the conference room, still steaming and atop of a coaster, complete with a distinct red mark on the rim, a lipstick mark. Now, usually, he would not have cared at all. There were quite a few women working around the police department and some of them wore lipstick even while on duty. It was easy for him to make a list of the three women who had a penchant for red lipstick – Marvell, Cheney and Lilica – but he knew that neither of them had been the one to drink from this mug. Because it was his mug and no one aside from him was allowed to use it.

This was the first warning he got.

The second was the stack of files that was neatly arranged on the table as if someone had been reviewing them when she – and it had to be a woman – had left, perhaps to check in with another officer who had returned from the field. This theory was instantly supported by the federal seal on some of the files, the mystery woman was someone working for federal investigations which narrowed down the array of cases she might have been called in for.

And the final third warning was the scent in the air. It was a mixture of a very familiar perfume and a very distinct smell of coffee that had been mixed with hot chocolate – which was his guilty pleasure winter drink. It was combination that – once combined with the sound of steps behind him – made it quite clear who had decided that after years, it was time to be back in town.

“My, that’s a surprise,” he said as he reached for the mug, taking a sip before he looked over his shoulder and straight at the very person he had expected. “Took you three years to come home.”

“And it appears like three years did nothing for your manners, that’s my drink,” she replied – her voice rougher than usual – as she stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. She was still short and thin – hell, her eyes had not even lost the _‘I’m smarter than you so just surrender’_ -glint he had loathed back in the days – unless it had been directed at their suspect. All in all, there was a trace of shock in his system because out of all the people who could have walked back into his life, he had never expected Ur Lund to make the start.

After all, their partnership had ended badly, very badly.

“Your drink is in my mug so I have the right to confiscate it,” he replied as he mentioned towards the files. “Mind telling me just what exactly it is you’re here for?”

“I don’t think I can,” she said as she made her way around the table, grabbing the mug out of his hand before emptying it in one go, her pale face sporting unusual red blotches of colour on her cheeks. “This is the investigation of a special task force. I doubt you’ll be on it.”

“Because you still hold that pathetic little grudge against me and you’ve filed a request to keep me out of your way, correct?” he asked as he wondered what exactly they had done to deserve this. The only problem was that he did know but still did not understand because when he had not listened to her, it had been for her own good and after all these years, he could not believe that she was so damn set on holding it against him.

“I actually haven’t filed that request yet but I guess that you’ll be happy to stay the hell away from where I’m trying to do my job this time around,” she snapped as she reached for one of the folders, flipping them through one by one. “Especially since you did never trust me.”

“I trusted you considerably more before you nearly got yourself killed and got mad when I didn’t let you die,” he hissed as he ran his hand through his hair, frustration oozing out of him. He remembered the day well. She had rushed off without him and when he had found her, she had been about to die. It had not taken more than five seconds for him to make the decision that he would not allow her to die and so rather than to chase after the bastard who had gunned her down, he had kept her from bleeding out which would not have been a problem usually if the guy who had shot her had not killed five people before he had been caught by the police – five deaths she had since blamed herself for, five deaths that had left her with a severe case of survivor’s guilt which had, along with the damage she had taken, changed her for good. And it had ruined their good and stable partnership because in her opinion, he had had the wrong priorities and should have gone after the killer rather than to save her life because according to the simple math she had done, her life was not worth five other lives.

(An equation he did not quite agree with, obviously.)

“I didn’t get mad at you for not letting me die, I got mad at you for waiting around at the hospital, waiting on the doctor’s verdict rather than to chase after the bastard,” she snapped as she shook her head, disappointment still lacing her voice. “We were partners, Silver.”

For a moment, he felt like laughing because even three years since the last time they had been in the same room, she kept telling herself the same story. “Of course we were,” he snorted.

“Yes, indeed,” she said as she rolled her eyes at him, taking note of his sarcasm without feeling the need to actually comment on it. Perhaps because she knew fully well that two could play a game and that she had never won against him. They had not been just partners but they had not been lovers either because they had never gotten around to this part of whatever they had been building up since day one.

(The way she had accepted the offer to work for federal investigations the moment she had been cleared for duty again had made it quite clear that they were back to square one.)

“You know, I wouldn’t mind working with you again,” he said as he slumped down on an empty chair, reaching for the cup and staring at it, his thumb hovering above the red mark as he was very tempted to wipe the stain away, just like he had wiped out all proof that she had ever existed in his life three years before.

(Not that it had worked quite as well as he had wanted to, she was stubborn and so her presence had been one of the lingering sort which had made things hard.)

“I heard you have a new partner,” she said and if he would not know her better than this, he would be nearly convinced that she sounded slightly jealous. “I doubt he’d appreciate it.”

Actually, Silver was rather convinced that his partner would sell him over to the woman on a silver platter when it meant that they would no longer have to deal with each other. After all, he had acquired a certain reputation of being extremely hard to deal with along the years. And this was a reputation he had crafted with a lot of care and consideration because he had been through with partners for a lifetime. The only reason why he and Ur had lasted five years as a team had been that she was no one to let him get away with his general recklessness and that he had never been afraid of calling her out on whatever mess she was getting herself into at the time. It had been a partnership based on blunt honesty.

(And the occasional implication that one nice day, they might be more than just partners.)

“He might have a problem with it but I don’t care,” he said as he tried to pick out his words carefully, considering that half the staff that had been working at the department three years ago was currently eavesdropping on their conversation, something she was certainly aware of as well because those people were insultingly bad at covering their actions up. “Point is: you’re back in town, I don’t want a re-do of the whole bleeding to death thing.”

“Keep talking like that and I may actually think that you cared,” she said as she pulled the mug away from him, turning towards the door. “And just so we’re clear – I’ll leave once this is done.”

“No need to point this out to me, I was hardly going to get used to your charming self again,” he said as he rolled his eyes at her and shook his head. It was not like her to play at an emotional aspect – mainly since she had spent years on denying that there had ever been any kind of attraction between them. Which had been a futile endeavour as _everyone_ had known about it.

“I’ll need you on this task force because no one knows this town better than you do,” she continued, her lips thin – and he knew why. His knowledge about the darker side of this town had saved their necks and their careers more than once but it had always come with a price. And this was something she had not liked then and was certainly not going to lie now.

“I got your back,” he said as he wondered if it was wise to promise unconditional support without even knowing what all of this was about. But then, even though she had last been less than happy with him and had voiced her discontentment loudly, there were still some rules of partnership that applied to them and one of them said rather clearly that when one partner called, the other had to follow – even if it was rather clear that it would result in something he would not want to be connected to.

“Let’s just hope we won’t need any testimony of our mutual loyalty,” she replied as she raised an eyebrow at him. “I do have a bad track record lately, you know?”

“Don’t tell me my successor died, that’d leave a bad taste in my mouth,” he said although he was rather sure that it was not quite that drastic although he had not learned more. After all, having to rely on the gossip to stay updated on the fate of his ex-partner had been humiliating.

“The first one put a bullet into my leg when I caught him being corrupt, the second time it happened, I put a bullet into the traitor’s back,” she said and there was a distinct lack of remorse in her voice. She had never approved of violence but she had never been one to approve of betrayal either and so she had made the only call she had been able to make at the time.

“You always had a preference for the ironical,” he replied as he raised an eyebrow at her. “A bullet to the back for the backstabber. I wonder if you’d shot me into the heart if I crossed you.”

“For you, I’d have made it especially dramatic,” she said drily as she rested her hand on the doorknob. “An arrow to the chest – which is a far cry away from my usual M.O. as you know.”

He knew, he knew very well. Archery had been her hobby, her pastime activity – nothing she would ever have soiled with blood. The farthest she had ever gone on this field was when she had stabbed someone with an arrow after she had been ambushed after her practice. And since she had been using military grade arrows, the damage she had dealt out that day had been impressive. But this was not her style. She was brilliant and her favourite type of case was the one where she did not have to hurt anyone.

 

**Please take your time but you've got to know that I am taking sight. Oh, you look good with your patient face and wandering eye, don't hold this war inside.**

 

The shooting range was deserted when Gildarts Clive had arrived but this had changed now. The stall next to his was taken and whoever was practicing their aim was a decent marksman. Not quite as skilled as Silver Fullbuster who claimed to have been born to shoot but better than Gildarts himself. So once he was done, he knocked against the other stall, a smirk growing on his face as he recognised the stance and the haircut.

“Lund,” he said as he nodded at the woman. “It has been three years since you’ve been here.”

“You know what they say,” she replied as she returned her gun to the holster. “All ways led back home … only, I’m just a guest in my own town this time around. One case and I leave.”

He pressed his lips together and bit back the urge to ask her if she had already talked to her ex-partner because this was a sensitive topic for all parties involved and as someone who had seen what happened to the idiots asking too many questions, he did not comment on this. “So you’re staying at a hotel, yes?” he asked instead because this was a safe topic.

“Well, I don’t have an apartment here anymore so yeah, I stay in a hotel,” she replied as she slung her bag over her shoulder, shrugging. “The boss thinks about getting me some better place to stay, however,” she added with a grimace, just too aware of what this implied.

“I’d offer you my spare guest room but on my way here, I met the forensic specialist and it’s Dreyar,” Gildarts said without explaining how he had offered the silent man the guest room because this went without saying. They had been working for the same department before he had come to this police station and it was just natural for them to stick together.

“Yes, I know,” she said, smirking. “Well, that Dreyar is the specialist. I assembled the task force.”

This did not come as a surprise since she had left to work in federal investigations and the moment the task force had first been mentioned, their almighty leader had already informed them all that it would be led and supervised by someone who worked federal as this was what it took to ensure that they had access to everything.

“I assume that’s why Fullbuster was not on the first draft you submitted to the captain but is on the current list,” Gildarts said as he wanted to punch himself because the last thing he wanted was another rant, courtesy of Ur Lund, about Silver Fullbuster – especially since she had never been able to decide if she wanted him dead or as her romantic partner. This constant contradiction had made it very difficult to ever figure out what she was actually after and so he had long given up on her.

“I had to make sure that we were on the same page, first,” she said drily as she followed him down the hallway, her movement fast as always. “And we are, obviously.”

“I don’t have to remind you that historically speaking, it was not always the wisest decision for the two of you to cooperate,” he said drily although he knew that it was a vast understatement. The way they had parted ways three years ago had said it all: they were morons because they failed had communicating properly, because they always kept secrets from one another. “I also doubt you told him about your arm.”

“He doesn’t have to know about that and as he didn’t ask, I didn’t have to lie,” she replied. “And you know that I would have told him if he had asked me about it, Gildarts.”

And this was the truth, Gildarts knew. The most common accusation Silver Fullbuster had uttered against his former partner was that she had always some kind of design and that this made it extremely difficult for him to trust her. But Gildarts also knew that Ur had never played her partner, that she had always been entirely honest with him – as long as he had asked her about things. The only way she had ever used to keep him out of the picture was by not offering him any information voluntarily.

“…you still need a place to stay,” he said, changing the topic because he really did not feel like they actually had to discuss anything else all over again because it was old news.

“I do, yes,” she said with a nod as she pressed her lips together, scanning the names in the file she had gotten out of her back, likely for the names of old friends who might have some room for her to stay at until it was all over and she could go home again. “A lot of people left.”

“They did, yes,” he said with a nod as he rested his hand on her shoulder, “but we’ll find something for you, no worries. Or maybe, I’ll find a corner for you in my apartment.”

“I’m not going to intrude on you and Dreyar,” she said as she shook her head, her smile never fading away from her face. “I’m a big girl, I can handle myself just fine.”

“You know, _partner_ , I got a spare guest room,” Fullbuster said as he passed them, shrugging. “It’s not quite as luxurious as your hotel room but it’s closer to the base.”

Gildarts did not comment on this although he felt like he really had to say something about it. Of course, it was true. The man lived extremely close to the department and technically, this was exactly what their resident workaholic needed. On the other hand, there was the major issue with the ambiguous relation between the both members of the task force – and Gildarts was extremely happy that he was working on another case because the tension between them would likely be enough to kill someone. For them to live in close quarters might be not exactly what people would call a great idea after all and it might ruin the lingering affection that was still there between them.

“No longer your partner, Silver,” Ur corrected in a nearly absentminded manner, “but I remember the spare room … I’d be happy to accept the offer.”

“I had it painted new only a few weeks back,” Fullbuster said as he scratched his neck and Gildarts wanted to roll his eyes at the man because he was not fooling anyone. There was no way that the black-haired man was not taking note of the same thing nearly everyone else in the building had noticed by now: that the woman who had come back after three years was just as good-looking as she had been when she had left – and that she looked even a little bit better than three years before because she looked healthy nowadways.

“Aw, I quite liked the green,” Ur said as she smiled, trying to mask her nervousness and remaining just as unsuccessful in her attempts on deceit as her former partner.

“It was time to move on to other things,” Fullbuster said with a shrug before he checked his wristwatch. “We got half an hour ‘till briefing – we could move your stuff in that time.”

“Especially since briefing doesn’t start ‘till I walk in,” she replied as she waved at Gildarts and followed her former roommate down the hallway and out of the building.

“ _This_ ,” Doctor Ivan Dreyar declared as he stopped next to Gildarts, shaking his head, “was the most pathetic attempt on flirting that involved two adults I’ve ever seen.”

And once more, Gildarts had no choice but to agree with the other man.

Between the two of them, between the forensic specialist and the expert for explosives, they had seen quite a few episodes in the odd courtship but this newest occurrences were easily making everything else look ridiculous. And this was saying a lot, considering that they had witnessed quite a few odd moments between the duo. There had been the time Ur had brought coffee for everyone on a team she had been part of along with Fullbuster to cover up that really, she had been buying coffee for her partner. Or the equally amusing time when Fullbuster had meticulously sabotaged everyone who had had designs on asking Ur out for some fancy ball so that in the end, he had been able to swoop in with a line about going together since they were both without a date. And yet, there were still people who did not believe that there had been something going on between the both officers who were both contenders for the title of the brightest around.

 

**Come back when you can. Let go, you'll understand. You've done nothing at all to make me love you less. So come back when you can.**

 

Matthew Jones was surprised when he entered his partner’s apartment found him in a shouting match with someone who was currently not within her sight but obviously female. He knew very well that Silver Fullbuster had no girlfriend and yet, there was an assortment of items all over the apartment that indicated the presence of a woman.

“I don’t care what you’re thinking, _princess_ , but we aren’t going on a stakeout in the middle of a snowstorm – and stop throwing scarves at me!” Silver yelled, facing the stairs that led into his spare bedroom. His face was pale, however, which was surprising, given the volume of his voice.

“Oh, shut up!” a woman shouted back before a bright pink scarf hit his face. “This is important.”

“Getting shot all over again is not important, dammit,” he snapped as he threw the scarf back. “Why do you have to be so yourself all the time? Just relax for a change, will you?”

“You know as well as I do that relaxing is not part of my vocabulary,” the stranger replied before footsteps could be heard on the stairs. “And I don’t care what you do, I’ll work tonight.”

“You obviously care about whatever I do because otherwise, you wouldn’t have started to prepare this stakeout the moment I said that I was calling over someone,” Silver said with a snort, his arms crossed over his chest. “It’s okay if you’re jealous that you’re no longer—”

“Believe me, Fullbuster, you’d know when I am jealous,” the woman replied before she came finally in view, surprising Matthew because he had expected someone vastly different. In Matt’s experience, Silver Fullbuster had a weakness for blondes, usually the kind that wore flowery headbands and was constantly surrounded by a devil-may-care-attitude. along with a trace of highly expensive perfume. The women he usually spent his time with came with perfectly painted faces – the kind everyone would look at more than just once.

(Women who were beautiful in a rather obvious, nearly aggressive way.)

This woman was completely unexpected. She did not look like she had been in some magazine, she looked like she had inspired some great painter in another life – the odd, timeless kind of beauty some women had. She was accompanied with an air of worldliness – because she had travelled far and her journeys had left marks on her, just like she had left marks in the lives of the people she had met along the way.

“Look, if you want to go out, at least give Clive a call so you aren’t on your own – and bring a gun for goodness’ sake,” Silver hissed as he threw the woman’s outfit a disgruntled glare, seemingly not approving of the short black dress she was wearing. “Just to be sure.”

“I’m no baby,” she snapped back as she crossed over to the sideboard, reaching for a gleaming string of pearls. “And I just gather intel –I’m not keen on any confrontations tonight.”

“You’re taking along your sunglasses, _partner_ ,” he said with a scoff, seemingly calling her out on some sort of lie she had uttered. “You got some sort of design, don’t you?”

“As we’ve established half an hour ago, I always have some ace up my sleeve,” she replied as she checked her makeup, touching up her crimson lipstick. “Don’t take it personal, Silver, but I have reasons not to tell you everything I do. You know why, don’t you?”

She looked like a classic diva, all black, white and red. For a moment, Matthew decided that if this was some sort of Film Noire, this woman would play the role of the femme fatale who lured everyone in and who ruined all their lives – just because she could.

“Oh yes, I do,” the man said as he rolled his eyes at her before he handed her the bracelet from the coffee table with a blank expression on his face. “I meddle around too much.”

“You worry too much,” she corrected before she patted his shoulder, a faint smile on her face. “You shouldn’t wait up for me, I’ll be out all night, probably.”

“Friendly reminder that you called in a meeting at ten in the morning tomorrow,” he stated drily, pacing up and down behind her.

“And I’ll be there – just as chipper as you,” she said as she reached for her coat, briefly nodding at Matt. “And please remember that you need more sleep than I do. I need you in top shape.”

“You know, I just wonder how I survived for the past three years when I didn’t have a broody tiny woman around to tell me how to live my life,” Silver said and in spite of his tone, there was something genuine in his voice, as it he was trying to tell her that he had missed her without giving away too much about what he really felt, what he really wanted to tell her.

“I could apologise for leaving, once again,” she said as she closed the buttons of her coat slowly, “but I think we’ve been over this already. I made the only decision I could make.”

“I know,” he said and there was a deeper meaning to his words than just what he had said. Whatever had caused the initial rift between them, he did not blame her and he was not going to demand of her to come back, to fix things. Silver Fullbuster had long understood that life was rarely a straight line, connecting two things but rather a mess  and that sometimes, it was not possible for someone to stay. He did not blame her and he had not locked the door for her, he was waiting for her to return on her own terms.

 

**You left your home, you're so far from everything you know. Your big dream is crashing down and out your door. Wake up and dream once more.**

Ivan Dreyar was usually not the kind of man who went to the bar after work but when he spotted a familiar face, he sighed and entered the bar, sitting down on the other side of the table, a frown covering his face. “Regretting a decision, are we?” he asked with a sigh.

He had never been much of a counsellor when it came to matters of the heart but he had observed this particular mess for the longest part of his career because through his affiliation, he had always been in the eye of the storm. And by now, he had to agree with Gildarts in many points. It was getting ridiculous. And there was only so much of this _childishness_ Ivan could take.

“Why do you ask a question when you know the answer?” the woman asked back as she stirred her drink with a pensive expression on her face. “This case isn’t a problem for me.”

“Yes, we all know that you can stomach homicide like it’s no big deal,” he commented as he raised an eyebrow. He had never been too close to Ur Lund but as she had been very close to Gildarts back in the days, he had spent enough time around her along the years to know how her brain worked – and which things bothered her. She downright hated it, for example, when someone expected her to solve a case without having all the facts or when someone demanded theories from her while she was still doing her reading. This set her apart from many other investigators who sometimes were just too willed to show up a bit and to voice suspicions without listening to whatever the hard facts told them.

“I was gone for three years and…” she shook her head before she downed her drink, sighing deeply. “It’s is insane how little has changed in all those years.”

“Care to explain a bit more?” he asked as he silently ordered a beer for himself. The past had taught him the lesson that there were people who could drink the hard liquor like it was water and that he did not belong to them, that he should rather stick to his beer and wine and left whiskey to Fullbuster, gin to Ur herself and the rest to Gildarts

“I still stumble over my words,” she said before she laughed bitterly at the irony that she – the woman who had been named one of the most eloquent speakers around – was the one who sometimes struggled with piecing together the one line that would set her free after years. The reason why she did not follow Gildarts’ advice by just telling Fullbuster how she felt was that she literally could not do this, not without babbling nonsense at first.

“Considered to show him rather than to tell him?” Ivan asked although he knew the answer. No, she had not. Because she knew that it would never work in her favour which was something caused by the way they had always showed each other the way they cared. Raging from small gestures like getting coffee over medium signs like the occasional hug to the great indications like saving each others life, they had done it all.

And yet, there had never been any progress in their relationship.

“I could, of course, throw years of subtlety over board by yanking him down by his collar and just kissing him,” the woman said drily as she stared at the olive in her glass like it had committed some sort of crime against her. “But, you know, short of that? No options left.”

“There’s always the option of moving the hell on,” Ivan said darkly but he knew the answer to this although he had never heard it before. First of all, it was always harder to move on from a love that had never happened than from one that had actually been there. After all, almost was one of the most painful words in this world. And then, there was this sense of loyalty Ur had always had and that had nearly killed her more than once.

“I don’t feel like I could do that,” she admitted as she toyed around with her bracelet, a grim expression on her face. “I’m a mess when it comes to this.”

“Well, there’s always the option of actually talking with him about it,” Ivan said with a shrug. He did not quite get the exact problem with this. First of all, unlike most people facing problems of the romantic kind, there was no doubt that the feeling was mutual, that Fullbuster was just as much into Ur as she was into him. It was also more or less common knowledge that while he had not been the biggest fan of her decision to leave, he had understood her reasons. And this had been what had mattered most.

“If we were to sit down to properly discuss all our issues, we’d be sitting there for a long time,” she said drily as she twirled a strand of her hair around her finger, a gesture of nervousness when it came to her. “There’s a lot of unfinished business.”

“Like you never telling him or anyone what exactly happened with you the day you nearly died,” he said as he snatched the olive away from her, chewing it slowly. “And as we both know, that’s only the tip of the iceberg because you could easily turn it back at him.”

Because they both had their fair share of idiotic actions, actions that had usually been provoked by the other one being in danger. And if Fullbuster was to address the event from three years ago, there was little doubt in Ivan that Ur had quite a few aces up her sleeve she could play in this case to remind her former partner that he was not quite innocent either when it came to making people worry. Actually, even with her near-death-experience from three years ago, he had still more hospital days under his belt than she had.

“If this was your attempt to get the truth from me, it was pathetic,” Ur said drily as she shook her head while she bit her lip, nearly as if she was tempted to ask a question but was keeping herself from doing so because she either knew the answer already and did not actually want any confirmation or she worried how it would look on her to ask about it.

A part of him wanted to tell her that the ice queen act was slipping from her and that with the way her cheeks looked like they had been set aflame, she would not even be able to fool Gildarts – and this meant something. It was not like Ur to fail at concealing her fear because usually, she was one of the best actresses Ivan ever had the pleasure of meeting. Part of the reason why most people struggled to read her was that they looked for the usual clues and she would never be caught giving herself away that easily. She had been very careful and she had taught herself to give the wrong clues at all times. Her body always told a lie, even when her mouth did not.

She always kept a secret or two all to herself, just like she always had a few aces left, aces she kept up her sleeve in case that everything went south. And this was what made her so impossible to quit. Even someone less emotionally involved than her three most trusted friends would have chosen her over almost everything and everyone else.

“Believe me, if I wanted to get the truth from you, I wouldn’t take me more than a few moments,” he said as he rolled his eyes at her. “I’m neither Clive nor Fullbuster.”

And he knew that her heart had stopped the day she had nearly died and that when Fullbuster had administered his first aid, he had revived her, had gotten her heart back on track. This meant that she had died for a few moments – and this was probably why she was so damn touchy about the entire subject, why she did not talk about it with anyone.

“But remember that you have no reason to be interested,” she said as she rubbed her collarbone, a habit she had taken on when she had been released from the hospital again.

“You know that I might make it my business,” he warned and hoped that she would not push him that far. He preferred to stay out of her business, especially since she had been the one to call him back home after he had ditched town one year after she had left. He owed her a favour or two and the least he could do was to stay away when she was hiding something.

 

**Come back when you can. Let go, you'll understand. You've done nothing at all to make me love you less. So come back when you can.**

Layla Heartfilia had worked at the police department as a profiler for years and yet, she had never understood what on earth drove Silver Fullbuster to show up at her office each Thursday at point two in the afternoon. Usually, he dropped by just to ask her the same three questions about her wellbeing but this time, he lurked around in the doorway for nearly five minutes before he decided to enter and sit down on the visitor’s chair in her room.

“I know why you’re here,” she announced without looking up from her file. “Your ex-partner.”

He rolled his eyes at her before he sighed deeply. “What can I say? No matter what I do, she drags me right back,” he said as he shook his head. And Layla who had watched it was very tempted to tell him that it was the same way for the woman as well. If the blonde was a therapist, she would have informed Silver that the only way for him to make actual progress would be by admitting that he had a problem but she knew that he would never do this.

“Ever considered to just walk up to her, hand her a cup of this horrible drink you both love so much and tell her that you’d like to take your partnership to the next level?” she suggested although she was rather sure that he knew that this would be the most proper way to proceed. “After all, she’s going to leave once the case is solved.”

“Yeah, and then she’ll be back to her favourite game of running away from me,” he said darkly as he shook his head, a frustrated expression on his face. “She doesn’t appear to be keen on spending much time with me … she works all the time and doesn’t talk to anyone – at all.”

Layla knew about this and she was not much of a fan either because back in the days, she had been friends with Ur. And of course, she knew why the black-haired woman was so hesitant about rekindling old friendships – because she would return to the capital once she was done. Ur would leave and she would take everything she had left behind the last time around with her because she had to keep herself together and could not afford any loose ends.

“She isn’t doing this to hurt anyone,” the blonde woman said as she shook her head. “If anything, she does this to limit the damage she will deal. However, sometimes, it’s a risk worth taking.”

“It is not a risk worth taking when she disappears and never comes back,” he said and from the mouth of everyone else, it would have been a noble statement. But this was Silver Fullbuster and this man did not do noble. He held his grudges and he was not the kind to just let go of something. Especially not when he felt like he had made a mistake by getting close to someone.

“Can you really look at her and say that it wouldn’t be worth moving out of your comfort zone?” Layla asked calmly as she thought back to the past when they had all laughed together, when the biggest problem had been to decide who would go out to buy new coffee. It had been an easier time but she could not say that she had preferred it because it was not that natural state of things to be frozen. In the way the world worked, the only way for anyone was that both Silver and Ur dropped their armours and their pointless defences and were simply honest about it.

Of course, they would end up tearing each other apart. There was no reconstruction without the complete destruction of what had been before after all. It was a lesson they both had to learn and Layla would not be their teacher, would not tell them how they were supposed to handle the mess they had made out of what had been supposed to be a nice and stable partnership. Not even when it would teach Ur that she was not the only one with above-average intelligence. Not even to teach Silver why exactly it was so stupid to wear the heart on the sleeve.

Layla was not part of the picture and she liked it this way, liked being no part of this large mess.

She knew that there was no point in running, that even if Ur would ditch town all over again, it would not solve anything. If the woman really wanted out of all of this, she would have to fight her way through the blood and the guts and the shattered trust.

“There hasn’t been a comfort zone for either of us in an eternity,” Silver said drily as he shook his head. “We’ve burned quite a few bridges along the way. And I can’t even say for sure if we’re done with that – I can’t make any promises whatsoever.”

It was a rare flicker of absolute honesty and it was enough to appease Layla, enough to make her understand that a part of the problem was the (probably mutual) fear to screw things up and to ruin everything once for all. “You know,” she said, scratching her neck, “you guys are stuck.”

“And in other news, water is wet,” he grumbled as a scoff escaped him while he frowned at her table like it had been what had caused the problems in the first time. “This sucks.”

“You didn’t use to be quite as, well, irritable when it comes to her,” the blonde said drily.

“Matters turned out to be quite more complicated than I ever believed it to be possible,” he replied as he got back up, shrugging twice before he smiled thinly at her. “Talking, huh?”

“Certainly a foreign concept for you but probably one that’s worth a shot,” Layla said darkly as she reached for one of her files, praying that they would not have to scrape Silver Fullbuster off the floor before the day was over after he had been brutally murdered by his ex-partner.

 

**Come back, I'll help you stand. Let go and hold my hand. If all you wanted was me, I'd give you nothing less. So come back when you can.**

 

She took note of a distinct lack of anger inside her chest as she sat in her temporary office, sorting through files with a frown on her face, a frown that served its purpose by keeping everyone away from her. She wanted to be left alone but this was because she wanted to get some actual work done and to get out of town as soon as possible, not because of anything else.

“Partner,” a familiar voice said as Silver put down a mug filled with her favourite winter drink in front of her. “Looks like we got to talk about something after all.”

“Do we now?” she asked, a yawn escaping her. “I got work to do, Silver, this is important.”

The problem was that she had never wanted to have this conversation with him about the one and only topic they had never discussed properly. They had talked about everything else – but they had never even tried to put a proper label onto their relationship because it had been a difficult question, one they had both treated with the necessary caution.

First and foremost, they had been partners. This had been more important than anything else. A partner was someone to take a bullet for – someone to follow to hell and back. There had been little room for any romantic notion. She had never needed somebody to love her because she had always been whole enough to be happy on her own. And in so many crimes she had seen, love had been what had led people astray and she had started to fear it. She would have trusted herself with this emotion because she had always been a rational woman and there had been little risk for her to lose her cool over someone she loved. But everyone else? They were too emotional, too prone to make decisions based on something that was not cool, hard logic.

She would have been okay with suffering from unrequited love. At some point, she might even have preferred it because she would not have to feel quite as guilty then after what had happened when she had been gunned down. The event had changed her and it had frightened her because she had passed out after Silver had arrived on the scene – and it had scared her halfway to death because he had been furious and to the day, she did not know why.

And this had made it nearly impossible for her to have a decent conversation with him. Once the damage in her arm had become apparent, she had no longer been able to be around him without feeling horrible because there had been a time after the incident when her body had not been hers to command and she had been frustrated enough with the situation to feel like it had been better if she had been killed that day.

“You know as well as I do that we can’t keep going like this,” he said as he crossed his arms over his chest, a frustrated expression growing on his face. “I wouldn’t say we were extraordinarily affectionate before you left … but we were at least capable of, I don’t know—”

“—hugging,” she supplied with a shrug, her lips still forming a thin line because it had never been as easy as that. It was true, for two people who had been suspected to have a secret affair by half their department, they had never been affectionate with each other, mostly because they both were not the type for this sort of thing. But every once in a while, they had hugged – usually when something had gone extraordinarily wrong.

“Even though your idea of hugging someone is more or less breaking someone’s ribs,” he said as he rolled his eyes, a smirk surrounding his lips. “But these days? You didn’t sleep at all as long as I was around. What happened to our old trust that day?”

She knew what had happened but she had little idea how she was supposed to explain it. At the hospital, she had been told that she had been dead for fifty-three seconds before Silver had revived her. At first, it had made her happy. She had been given a second chance, a chance to fix all the little things she had messed up. But then, things had gotten complicated. The news her superiors had tried to keep from her had seeped through and she had learned that her survival had been paid with the life of five innocent people. It had been a major setback for her recovery and around the same time, she had first developed issues with her left arm. The doctors had been at a loss until she had suggested that maybe, it was psychological.

And this was what had triggered her decision to leave town and start over new somewhere else, somewhere where she could forget about what had happened, where she did not have to deal with the consequences of her decisions all the time. And this had been better for her health because she had regained her old motor skills to a certain degree.

“I trust you,” she said quietly as she twirled a pen between her fingers. “I just don’t trust myself anymore … because whatever I touched in this town, it always went up in flames.”

“Well, you could have—” he started but her glare ended this attempt quickly.

“I could have said so, of course,” she said as she got up and begun to pace in the office, a frown on her face. “But I realised something in all those days I spent on my own … I was good on my own. Of course, I was better when someone else was around but…” she shook her head, a sigh escaping her. “I didn’t need anyone else. I didn’t need all this stuff.”

“And you still were in love with me,” he said and if he had been anyone else, she would have laughed at him and called him an arrogant fool for even assuming that she might have let her heart override her mind – because this was not like her at all.

“I was, yes,” she admitted as she closed her eyes for a moment, forcing back the heat in her cheeks. “A rather unwise decision, in retrospective.”

“I actually never understood that part,” he admitted as he shook his head. “Someone with your skill would have known that I felt the same way about you.”

“Let’s be honest, we both always knew that the feeling was very much mutual,” she said with a scoff because right now, they were insulting their own intelligence by acting like there had ever been a trace of a doubt in either of them. “So perhaps … we skip the denial part.”

 “Of course I loved you,” she said and it was strangely liberating to finally say it although she had always felt like she owed herself more than a confession that tasted like venom on her tongue. But in the end, she had waited with this for years. “That was the problem from day one.”

“We made an awfully good team nonetheless,” he said as he looked straight at her, his eyes holding no traces of regrets or other things she would not like to see. “Even with that problem.”

“Of course we were,” she said as she wrapped her fingers around the edge of the desk.

Because she had been the kind of person to use a scalpel to solve a problem whereas he had been the guy to use a shotgun. It had made them more balanced, on one side. When she had been too hesitant, he had given her the necessary shove into the right direction and when he had been three steps too fast, she had stopped him and dragged him back. And this was why it had been impossible for her to find a partner even half as good as him after she had ditched town and had worked with a federal investigation department. It was not even that she had been a bitch to her potential new partners on purpose, she had just been always quite fast to snap when they had not done what she had needed them to do.

“It was never a problem because we didn’t let it become one,” she said as she rubbed her ear, one of her few nervous habits – one he could call her out on any time. “We both knew. We both had our reasons not to act upon it. We both had different priorities.”

And this was why she had never been able to understand why people had suggested that she should be angry at him. For one, she had been just as capable of calling him out on his feelings as it had been the other way around. Secondly, she had known that the moment they would have an actual conversation about it, the game would change and they had been both too dedicated to the careers they had built up for themselves over long years.

“There’s just this one thing I could never explain,” he said and a part of her knew what was about to come and she found that she dreaded the question not quite as much as she had thought. “Under usual circumstances, shouldn’t we have minded the whole dating around thing the other did?” he asked as he pushed the hot chocolate closer into her direction.

She mused briefly about this, deciding that he was most certainly right about this and that they should have minded it. Then, the situation had never been what most people would have called normal from the very start. When they had become partners, he had just wrapped up his divorce from his high school sweetheart and had been instantly labelled as ‘off-limits’ from most officers at the department who had talked to her about her new partner. This had not been the right time for any of them to make a move, especially since their feelings had grown in the years of their actual partnership when they had bonded over their preference for hot chocolate and their ability to stomach even the worst cases without much of a problem.

“I don’t think that this was ever an issue because neither of us happens to be the text book example for ‘possessive’,” she said as she shrugged, finally taking a sip of the hot chocolate. “It’s good – my compliments to the chef.”

He was silent for a moment as he held out his hand and with a roll of her eyes, she passed on the mug. “You’re still leaving again,” he said calmly as he raised his eyebrows at her. “Am I right?”

“Of course you are,” she said as she smiled thinly at him. “This place stopped being mine a long time ago … and – it’s yours now. Your stage, your show.”

“We had a pretty good time as partners,” he said and took a sip from the drink they were apparently now sharing. “It was often funny.”

“Like the time you invaded my apartment to check if my self-defence was up to your standards?” she asked as she nervously toyed around with the knot that kept her scarf in place. “I could have killed you for that, you know. And I could’ve called it self-defence and would have gotten away.”

“What happened to your voice?” he asked and she bit her lip before she untied the knot and removed the scarf before she tilted her head. She heard the surprised yelp that escaped him as he spotted the angry red scar that was burned into her skin and she just shrugged.

“Turned out, federal wasn’t much safer than this one,” she said drily as she remembered the day she had felt like she would be killed after all she had been through by a man who liked to brand his victims by using wire he had heated up previously. “Interesting that you noticed it, by the way. Most people think it’s because I drink too much.”

“You know, talking of drinks, I owe you one,” he said as he scratched his neck before he wrapped the scarf around her neck again, making sure that the scar was covered up.

She was silent and bit her lip before she looked down at the mug and sighed deeply. “You know, I thought all old deals were off the table when—”

“—to quote a popular song, you took your suitcase and I took the blame?” he asked as he raised an eyebrow. “Well, yeah, technically, I thought the same. But you’re leaving town soon anyway.”

“I am, yes,” she said as she lifted her hands and sighed, again. “Okay, let’s go. Suppose you know somewhere to go? It has been three years since I’ve last gone out in this town.”


End file.
